Wednesday 20 January 2010 09.37 EST
First published on Wednesday 20 January 2010 09.37 EST

The last seven days has seen detailed discussion of climate change causes and consequences around the world, from methane rises in the Arctic to Qatar's energy consumption. Joining up the dots led members such as bbmatt and RField7 to argue that regardless of climate change, we need to be more sustainable, with benjo02 insisting, "We should focus our collective power discussing our limits to growth."

Debate of the week

* wonjale: "Another illustration of the absolute folly of trying to develop, industrialise, and Westernise a plot of land that is barely livable without reservoirs of water and 24 hrs per day air conditioning to cope with the climate."

* zavaell: "It beats me why a country like Qatar doesn't make a massive switch to solar power – it's all around them."

* Boredstupid: Residents get Electricity AND Water for free? What's the catch?

Best comment

jodro: "If these thousands of scientists and scientific institutions are wrong, and the world won't warm up, yet we have taken all the measures to address this apparently non-existent problem, ie switched 100% to renewable energy and cleaned up the planet (something we have to do eventually anyway, as oil and coal etc will one day run out), there's no harm done… in fact, we will have made a headstart in saving our economy from the effects of peak oil and so on, and making us independent of all sorts of unsavory governments. However, IF the scientists are right, and we do nothing, it's the end of civilisation as we know it and billions will die..."

Elsewhere on the web

@guardianeco on twitter passed 12,000 followers this week – meaning we have increased numbers by 50% since the start of November last year. Twitterers have been particularly keen to feedback on the Welsh badger cull story, with binarylove complaining "poor badgers always get blamed" and tyfach being rather less polite on the subject. For wildlife lovers elsewhere - the UN have a map of what's happening globally in celebration of the International Year of Biodiversity.